Succulents and More™

On Saturday, after visiting Hans at Dry Oasis Plants in Half Moon Bay, Kyle and I checked in on our friend Tracy in Livermore. Tracy writes about her garden on her blog tz_garden . If you follow her blog, you know that she’s been making major changes to her front garden . In fact, she’s been completely transforming it, creating mounds, adding rocks (some massive), and planting hundreds of new plants, both succulents and South African and Australian shrubs. The last time Kyle and I were there , last May, it looked like this: Tracy’s front garden, May 2025 Tracy’s front garden, May 2025 Now, nine months later, it looks like this: February 2026 To say that things have changed would be the understatement of the year. Take a closer look at these photos. There is much to see. The standout at this time of year is Aloe ‘Tangerine’ with its signature orange flowers. As you’ll see, Tracy has at least five of them in the front and back. Tracy and Kyle in front of the massive 3,700 lb. boulder T...

Located in Half Moon Bay on the California coast south of San Francisco, Dry Oasis Plants is a small nursery focusing on plants suited for dry gardens and xeriscaping, offering everything from small 4-inch pots to 15-gallon architectural specimens. Their primary specialties include aloes and agaves as well as cacti and other succulents. Operating out of a nearly 14,000-square-foot space in a greenhouse complex off Highway 1 , the nursery provides high-quality plant material for both individual enthusiasts and landscape professionals. Hans Brough Dry Oasis Plants is the brainchild of Hans Brough. He graduated from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo with a degree in Landscape Architecture but worked as a web designer and software engineer for many years while collecting and growing succulents in his private garden. In 2023, he moved into a greenhouse that had originally been a hydroponic lettuce-growing facility. In this blog post , he describes the labor-intensive process of dismantling the ...